Vaunted D.C. charter school sued again over teacher who sexually abused children

Debbie Truong, The Washington Post

Published
8:27 pm CDT, Monday, August 19, 2019

The family of a third student has filed a $30 million lawsuit against a respected District of Columbia charter school in federal court, alleging that school employees failed to protect the child from a teacher who sexually abused students.

Manuel Garcia Fernandez is accused in the lawsuit of sexually abusing the student while the child was in fourth and fifth grades at Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School, from 2013 until 2015. Two other families earlier sued the school - widely known by the acronym LAMB - alleging that not enough was done to protect their children from Fernandez; they reached a settlement out of court, legal records show.

Fernandez was criminally charged, convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting six of his students on campus from 2015 to 2017. The civil lawsuit, filed last week in D.C., does not say whether the student involved with the suit was among those Fernandez was convicted of sexually assaulting.

Steven McCool, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The school's attorney, John McGavin, said Friday that the case had been "resolved" but declined to comment further.

Messages to school officials, including spokeswoman Maria Jose Carrasco, were not returned.

School employees had "the authority and ability to investigate and take meaningful corrective action to end or prevent the sexual assaults, exploitation, discrimination and harassment, but failed to do so," according to the lawsuit.

In the suit, the student and the student's mother said Fernandez put his hands down the child's pants and also touched the student's genitals over their pants. The student, who graduated from the school in 2015, is not identified by name in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses the school of failing to properly investigate and fire Fernandez after other teachers reported concerns about his interactions with students and "his failure to observe appropriate boundaries."

One teacher reported that Fernandez had students sit on his lap, according to the lawsuit.

The school, according to the court documents, created a climate "that tolerated sexual assault, exploitation, abuse," and disregarded reports of sexual misconduct.

The student and the mother said in the lawsuit that the school did not notify parents when Fernandez was investigated by police in 2015, and they cited the school's alleged failure to contact parents and ask them to hand over their children's cellphones as evidence.

The 2015 police investigation did not result in charges, and Fernandez returned to his job on March 30, 2015, remaining as the child's teacher until the end of that school year.

LAMB, which has two other campuses in D.C., is one of the most highly regarded in Washington.

The school's principal, executive director and a student psychologist lost their jobs after the school's board of directors commissioned an outside investigation into administrators' handling of concerns about Fernandez.

In a five-page letter sent to parents in November 2017, the LAMB board told families that "administrators in charge failed to respond appropriately" and failed to "recognize the inappropriate behaviors as red flags and make appropriate decisions."

The two other families who sued the school made allegations similar to those in the lawsuit filed last week, accusing school employees of failing to protect students from the teacher.

The two children involved in the earlier legal action reported the abuse to their parents in February 2017, after Fernandez came under police investigation a second time and was charged with sexually abusing students, according to the lawsuit filed in January 2018.

LAMB reached settlements with both those students this year, court records show. The amount of money the school and two former employees agreed to pay the students is redacted from court records.